transcript, and commentary

posted on september 4th 2024, The title of this episode is “The Parenting Crisis No One Talks About” and you know I am going to be getting heated on this…. i was not expecting jokes about concentration camps, hitler, and gassing people… yes, you just read those words in relation to a podcast about parenting! welcome to another unsurprising fuck up from the boys at better bloke project.

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rob: welcome back to the better bloke podcast where, uh, today it’s just us two, No guest, something a little bit different than the last couple of weeks.

matty: yeah, we’re following up one of our earlier episodes where we spoke about fatherhood, um, all things being a parent raising kids, and it was a pretty popular episode we had a lot of guys hit us up saying talk on that more, and as someone that knows sweet fuck all about raising kids, we’re going to put you on the spot today with how to raise a strong son.

rob: I also know sweet fuck all about raising kids.

he has a 9 year old son and a daughter who is very young. his improvised half-baked approach to parenting is probably supposed to be relatable, but since this man has his child representing himself and their charity by appearing at events, and maintains a public instagram for this child (featuring the name and location of his gym, along with group shots of all his sports friends) that makes rob a great public example of how being uneducated & intuitive on parenting is a dangerous detriment to your children….

matty: at least you’re doing it

this infuriates me – the idea that showing up as a clueless parent is better than not showing up at all is what’s failing our children and society at large. this is one of my driving forces, my mission against shitty parents who think that bare minimum participation and doing zero research into parenting is benefiting their child…

rob: I am doing it but it’s one of those things where there is literally no textbook, and if anyone says there is – whatever you read, it probably won’t matter for those kids that you’re raising, so it’s very much a trial and error game.

sorry, what? there’s textbooks for developmental psychology. there’s thousands of books by child psychologists. hell, the australian government literally provides the triple p parenting program to the public for free!

matty: it’s kind of like the health benefits, like if you read all these things on how to parent, you’re going to have so many contradictory things, there’s no way to do them all,

rob: no, you just try to raise good kids as good as you can, but there, there’s so many things that you can read on the internet, like oh you know there’s this and this and this, and there’s all these milestones you have to be hitting by this certain time, and I personally think that all it does is put a bit of pressure on a parent to you know – “I need to train my kid to do this this and this” but it’s just setting an unrealistic expectation on if your kid isn’t up to that standard just yet, so no it’ll it’ll be a good chat hopefully.

matty: so you’ve spoken a bunch about, like you do your grateful with Hemi, sort of like these are things that you’ve heard, or seen, or read, somewhere that you’re implementing into your Parenthood, what sort of Education have you actually gone out to try and like learn these things? have you intentionally SE it out and thought hey I could implement? this this is right for Hemi, or this is right for bea. or have you like intentionally tried to find things that’ll form them in a way you want?

rob: no not at all

matty: okay so where did that come from?

rob: so the Grateful came from Jess, that was something that we started doing with Jess and that, and she was like “look you know we want to do this and this” and it’s, it’s, I don’t even know where she got it from.

matty: I think probably educating herself

rob: 100% she’s definitely the the parent that you know reads the books and does a lot of the studying behind, you know, what we can do and all that sort of stuff, but I’m very much and much like this “go with the flow” and I’ll take bits and pieces of what she learns, and what she reads and we obviously, you have discussions, when you’re, you know, partners and parents, and we just sort of cherry pick what works for us, and obviously the Grateful is something that we spoke about it with Matty Mack, you know teaching your kids about training the mind, and trying to get your your mentality right, that’s something that kids need to learn, especially in today’s society, that, why wouldn’t you start doing it even if it’s just rolling the dice if it actually works or not?

matty: you are very good with the flow you do it off feels but I think you like get those feels and you know if something’s right or not

rob: yeah

matty: we’re going to talk about specifically like raising boys cuz I think that’s something you know we’re trying to raise the next generation of men in a society that’s not like it has been before what are some of the things you do to balance compassion with not training weakness, because kids are, obviously they, they need compassion. they need support, they need help, but there is probably a level where, you know, you can overdo it, and then you’re training kids that, you know, don’t have to solve their own issues, they don’t have to go out, and, I don’t know, feel the pressures of the world, is that something you’re dealing with yet? cuz they’re still pretty young?

matty confusing compassion for support, and support for enabling.. and training for parenting… (classic emotionally immature boy things)

rob: they, they are still young, so if we’re talking about raising boys so Hemi, is well, he’ll be nine very very soon, and it’s something that, well, that’s the whole reason we got him into boxing, it wasn’t more so, if, you know, the ability to be able, to like, you know, defend himself, and all that, it was more so for the mental strength that it brings along with it, so I think that’s, it is a very important thing to be able to, sort of, know that compassion without the weakness and all that, I don’t see compassion as a weakness thing, it’s, everyone should have compassion and, you know, be able to show empathy and all that sort of stuff, but you still want to be a man and not show that, I guess, emotional vulnerability, if that’s the right way to put it, I don’t know, you’re you’re a lot better at saying these things than I am

yep, AND CLASSIC emotionally immature boy responses from rob “compassion without the weakness” and “be a man and not show emotional vulnerability”… this is just sad at this point.

matty: we can get into emotional vulnerability in a little bit, but on the compassion thing – cuz I can’t really talk, cuz I’m not raising kids, right, but you know, I see things of how people are doing stuff with their kids. and an example would be, say you got your little kid, anxious, doesn’t like sports, and swimming carnival comes around – the kids like “I don’t want to go” and they’re like “that’s all right I’ll let you Chuck a sicky because you don’t want to go” and that it’s kind of.. the parent is allowing them to back away from a situation which would make them feel uncomfortable – from a point of compassion, so I get that, you’re looking after your kid, you’re stopping them feeling uncomfortable, you’re taking a pressure off them, but there’s a, there’s got to be a limit to that.

a limit to compassion… matty doesn’t understand enabling vs support vs compassion….

rob: you’re being an enabler though, like, if they know, kids are really smart, I think where, if they know they can go “oh I don’t like doing this” and a parent goes “oh okay yep no worries” the kids’s going to keep doing that, so there comes a point where you just need to, sort of, put your foot down and go “well tough shit,” like, “this is happening, you’re doing it”.

matty: well that’s the question! so where does it change from compassion to holding the line of being a parent, and saying “this is the pressure, this is what I’m putting on you, I’m pushing you out in the world, to experience it, deal with it, and learn with it, like are there situations you’re having to deal with already at at 9 years old where he doesn’t want to do something, but you know it’s going to form him into the bloke that you want him to be?

“when does it ~change~ from being ~compassion~ to ~holding the line of being a parent~”… this inherent misunderstanding between compassion (aka the action of empathy & sympathy to alleviate emotional suffering) and support (assistance, resources, encouragement), and teaching boundaries and morals shows us a very strange link in matty’s mind about empathy, sympathy, boundaries, morals, & familial support (especially financial) being entwined together in an unhealthy fashion… it’s giving “tough love”, it’s giving “we will cut you off if you don’t follow our plan for you”, it’s giving “we only show you empathy & sympathy when something has gone totally belly up!” – it’s incredibly common in emotionally neglectful families for this situation to play out, and the only time that mother and father to give love and attention is when the child is sick. which embeds the belief that something has to be terribly wrong for you to deserve full support…. that a little sniffle doesn’t warrant lots of cuddles.

rob: I mean, every parent will have to deal with that with kids, and I think, all we need to do is look out at Society now, and you see all these kids, just running a Muck, and I think that’s got a lot to do with the parenting going “oh no it’s okay, you know, I don’t want to hurt your feelings” fuck that, like, you’re a parent, put your foot down, be Stern with your kids, don’t be an enabler, like, you need to show your kids that, you know, you need some resilience, you need to deal with shit, you need to be able to, I don’t know, there’s going to be things in this world that you don’t want to do that you got to fucking do it, that’s the real world, so I think by only allowing your kids to do what they want to do – like, I’m not saying, you know, we’re going to go out and make a concentration camp of kids and all that sort of shit, like, you know, you got to, you got to keep it serious but…… *tilts head to right* by enabling your kids to just back out of whatever they want, you’re not raising strong kids, and that goes with anything.

yikes. so many levels of yikes. plus the entire cognitive dissonance about kids behaviour today and generations of poor parenting – but of course rob, it must be those “gentle parenting” parents…

matty: same goes for solving problems too, right, so I don’t know what kind of problems kids have, maybe they’re, I don’t know, they got an issue with one of their friends, right, there’s there’s drama going on in the kids friend group, right, I would assume it’s a teachable moment, where you can, sort of, tell them about communication, and teach them “hey you go deal with that” – if they run to that parent, and then you sort it out, it’s just missing a valuable life lesson. so I think problem solving is something that does need to be pushed onto the kid, obviously depending on size of problem, their age, all that sort of stuff, but that’s how, that’s how, I see parents are going to educate and train these kids.

“pushing” problem solving onto kids… said the man with no children and no personal knowledge of developmental psychology. they keep talking about “training children” not raising children, but training them.

rob: a lot of the stuff that, sort of, we’re talking about, it’s not something that you, like think about before it’s happening, or as it’s happening, it’s just something you subconsciously do, I think depending on where you sit as a person, where, I don’t know, if you’ve always been pandered to and, you know, everyone’s like “oh I don’t want to hurt your feelings this this this”, you’re going to then go and do that to your kids too. so you just, sort of, I don’t know, weakness breeds weakness – but if you want to build strong resilient kids, like teach them about the real fucking world, like it’s not “good job, you know, you’ve done this” you’re going to get the same as the person that’s gone out and worked their ass off and crushed it, that’s not how it fucking works, like, if you want something, you work for it, it may not be that I’m just going to get gifted this, because you don’t get gifted shit, like, I think you need to you need to teach your kids real world shit, to an extent obviously, you don’t want to go throwing them in the deep end showing them some hectic shit from an early age, but…. you, you can’t, you can’t do that, and that’s, I think that’s what’s wrong, is kids don’t have resilience, and we spoke about that a few months ago. you need to kids need more resil-people need more resilience. but it starts with the parents, like, they’re the Next Generation.

excuse me, my brain just actually stalled… this man.. talking about parenting, and saying that not wanting to hurt peoples feelings is a weakness that breeds weakness.. called parents “the *next* generation”….. oy vey.

matty: it’s a bit early, but have you thought about sort of a time frame that you would put Hemi out into the workforce?

honestly, truely, heaven forbid this kid is autistic. i hope he has more freedom and choice than is being conveyed here. because i have seen very little space for neurodivergence being included in robs advice.

rob: it depends if I want to get the valliant built or not. um *laughs* you know, it’s – no, it, like, that’s the thing, well, it’s all going to come down to, like situation things, like, if he, what’s, what’s the age now? is it 13 and 9 months or is it 14 and 9 months? it depends on industry, but yeah 13/14, if he wants to come home one day, and go “okay I’m this age I want to go get a job now” sweet! awesome! if he’s, I don’t know, just say, like, he’s pretty big into his sport, and all that sort of stuff, if he’s training, like, pretty heavily with his Sport, and he wants to keep training without working, no issues like you know he can live at home and keep training and whatnot, because he’s still putting the work in. if he wants to sit at home and do sweet fuck all and not get a job, nup, that’s I feel like, that’s when you put your foot down as a parent, where, you, your kids, your kid at the end of the day, like, you still got to set an example and go “hey, this is what’s happening, if you don’t like it, go find somewhere else to live” and then they quickly learn that “oh shit, I can’t afford anywhere else to live” *laughs* that’s not something I’ve had to think about too too much, being that he’s only 9 years old, but yeah I guess that’s that’s how I would approach that situation.

eve: *silently screaming into the abyss of childhood emotional neglect, and the emotional hell that is conditional love* please note the narcissistic parent comment of “depends on if i get the valiant rebuilt” implying his son is his employee first and foremost… fuck that.

matty: yeah, you’re not going to charge him rent till he’s, what 11?

rob: maybe not 11, maybe like 10

matty: 10

rob: yeah, times times pretty tough see we see what the interest rates do

matty: annual increments

rob: how how old were you when you moved out?

matty: I went to boarding school when I was 14

rob: yeah, okay, shit

matty: and then I graduated when I was 17, and I moved down to Brisbane by myself. yeah I was out pretty early, um, obviously boarding school is a bit different, you know, you’re looked after and all that, and then College was kind of the same, then I went to the mines, so I had a long period where people were just feeding me.

this makes sense and is wholly unsurprising – but now we have a broader understanding of matty and rob, the two are a pair of emotionally abandoned boys suffering from childhood emotional wounds, just trying to make sense of the world in the only way they know how – bloke culture. it shows us the financial difference between rob and matty also.. for those who are unaware matty is referring to a “residential college” which are kind of a cross between a fancy dormitory and a frat house. they are the most expensive option for student accommodation. it now makes sense why they have the emotional maturity of teenage boys…

rob: yeah, see, I was different, I didn’t, yeah, I was, I was at home a fair bit, so prob, probably explains a little bit of the difference between us.

matty: probably, um, but we are seeing so many kids staying at home for so much longer, and I don’t think it’s always a very good thing, I think it comes back to this compassion coming from the parents, yeah great, okay, rent’s expensive, you know, maybe you’re supporting them while they’re study, all these things, but there is a time where they’re taking the piss, they’re not, like, you can’t be a 25-year-old playing video games all day, going to work fuck all, 20 hours a week, just to pay for your Hungry Jacks. a parent shouldn’t support that, that’s my views.

so yes, read that again, matty thinks parents should have less compassion (like him… a privileged private school white boy who was sent to boarding school and college by his parents at 14).. it’s giving lone wolf. it’s giving emotional neglect. it’s giving functional addiction (alcohol and/or work). it’s giving love = money… it’s giving.. “money isn’t what i wanted from my parents, but it’s all they had to give.”

rob: look, I agree with you, but in saying that, it’s if there’s a kid that’s trying to get ahead, and they are working, and they’re living at home while they’re working, and doing all that sort of stuff, I agree with them being there because, like, fuck times’s are tough now man.

matty: well look

rob: if, if you’re, if you’re like, a young, let’s just say 21/22 and you’ve got three mates that you want to move out and rent a house with – rent’s like 600 plus bucks now in Brisbane!

matty: oh, it’s more than that on the goldy (gold coast)

rob: like, that’s fucking disgusting, how are you supposed to afford that if you’re an apprentice, and you’re making… 400 bucks a week? like everyone’s like, we’ve spoken about so many fucking times, everyone’s financing shit, doing this and that, just to try and, sort of, live above their means, I reckon that’s a lot of the reason why people are staying at home, just to be able to afford their shit now,

matty: I think if there’s a good reason, so a financed LandCruiser is not a good reason,

rob: no

matty: being at Uni or doing an apprenticeship, and having minimalized earning capacity, good reason. I got friends that have moved back in home cause that’s the only way they’re going to be able to save a house deposit, so they’re like, “we’ll do a year with my parents and I’ll put aside 40 Grand” great reason, all right, makes sense, but if it’s because it’s the easier option, because you’re not… letting yourself be capable to be better, wrong way to do it.

this is such a loaded statement…it brings up the idea of them ignoring systemic issues… because they’re talking about living at home at 25, which isn’t abnormal in the slightest these days. rent is abhorrently expensive and it’s impossible to get into the rental market as a new renter with such steep rent and so little money. most younger people have been priced out of the rental market for the last 5 years, and these men who both own property from before covid, have the audacity to say it’s wrong to choose the “easier” option.. are their audience not people who suffer from mental health issues? do they hear themselves shaming behaviours that come with poor mental health? telling people to adhere to a certain societal norm…in this financial and social climate… yikes

rob: yeah, pull your head in.

matty: yeah, cuz your parents aren’t going to be there forever, and you know, you, you need to stand on your own two feet,

rob: and I think as a parent you need to be able to say.. that to your kid too, like, that’s one of those hard conversations that you need to have, because you probably haven’t had, at a younger time, to try and build their independence up.

matty: well, you could do it passive aggressively, and just keep raising… board, just then make make them pay more and more bills, and then just price them out of your place, CUz you live in a nicer place than they should be living in, and then they got to move to Logan..

are they actually joking about financially abusing children? or are they talking about doing it to grown up children?

rob: or you could just teach them about the real world, and be like “hey” and they Rock up home one day, and their shit’s in the front yard.

another utterly fucked comment from rob about his “real word education”, conditional love, and how to control your kids behaviour with the threat of abandonment or homelessness… that’s not fucked at allllllllllll *screams into pillow* i personally believe in making your parents pay for fucking you up with this kind of “parenting” that is essentially coercive control.

matty: preparing them for divorce, I like it

rob: yeah *laughs* yeah

matty: every year it’s going to keep going up, um, the job thing’s interesting, cuz I got a lot of mates and they are dealing with it in different ways, and I can see all points of view, like one of them, he, his kid, 17, never had a job, they’re pretty well off, and he said his primary job is to get good grades in school

rob: yep

matty: which is fine, like, value education. I value education, it’s great, but what we’re kind of seeing now is that he doesn’t have the social skills of dealing with adults all the time, that, you know, I was working in a convenience store when I was 13, had to deal with people, and I think it kind of helped, and also now he’s..

rob: kind of helped, you’re still pretty awkward with people

matty: still awkward with people, but I can do that if I have to

rob: yep

matty: um also, like, now it’s, like, time to get a job, he’s like “what do I do”. he’s, like, thinking of starting a business, but there’s no life experience there, he hasn’t done anything, it’s not about the money at that early age, right, I would think, like, you would send your kid out to do something for the purpose of them doing something, obviously if they’re bringing home $80 a week, great, it’ll allow them to do what they need to do, but it’s not going to change anything other than teach them life lessons.

the dichotomous thinking of these two

rob: yeah, no, and I think life lessons is the biggest thing where it’s, well it’s like your first job, that’s never going to be your career, I mean if it is, good on you, but you, you get into your first job as a stepping stone, I think everything in life is a stepping stone. like no one’s going to find, it’s no different to what we speak about with purpose, like no one’s going to find their purpose off the rib, they never might…

matty: very rare

rob: I definitely didn’t

matty: absolutely exceptional circumstances, but Tik tok’s available now so they could be a millionaire before they’re 16

rob: see that, that’s a whole ‘nother thing, where I’ve spoken to hemi, be just like, you know, mucking around like, “oh so what do you want to do for a job” and obviously kids, it changes all the time, but there was a time when he went “oh I want to be like a YouTuber” I’m like “no you don’t that’s not a job!”

matty: Daddy’s a YouTuber now

rob: here I am sitting in front of a camera, doing this shit, so you know, I can’t sit there being a hypocrite now, can I? if he wants to be a YouTuber, yeah, good job, it’s way worth it *sarcasm* but I don’t know, I think it’s…you can’t, you can’t not let your kids do what they want, and not figure it out on their own at the same time, like, obviously you can help guide them into making less mistakes, but you still want your kids to make their own mistakes, and learn from it, because if you’re just sitting there, and this comes back to that whole, you know, not letting your kids get into situations, or being a helicopter parent and all that sort of stuff. if your kids don’t fuck up, they’re not going to learn, or they’re just going to think that there’s no there’s no repercussions to what they do. so, they could go “oh” and you pull them out of something before it actually goes wrong, they’re going to go “oh I can do that again”. you may not be there to pull him out of that again, so what’s going to happen then? that’s, that’s life, just yeah, let your kids fuck up and figure it out on their own. obviously to an extent.

matty: yeah, like little things like failure, failure in in sport, or job, or whatever, like, it’s a lot better that they fuck that up when they’re 14 and they come home, and you know there’s a meal on the table, and it’s fine, yeah “it’s fine, okay, we we got you” it’s good learn to deal with that, it’s not going to happen again. that happens when they’re 22, and there’s no Mom and Dad anymore?

rob: yep

matty: you know, they’re going to have an existential crisis trying to deal with… you know, where’s their value, and all this sort of stuff, so life lessons… I’ll keep going back to that.

audience please note that matty couldn’t pronounce existential crisis.

rob: I mean, in saying that though, if they get to 22, there’s no Mom and Dad to fall back on, and then shit hits the fan, it’s kind of a good Learning lesson, like pressure makes diamonds.

matty: yeah but it’s, it’s a lot of pressure quickly.

rob: yeah

matty: what you’re talking about, is like, you know, little Stepping Stones, all the way through, right? and you’re building over a decade or more, like, this man, so when Hemi does get to 17/18, he’s going to be a fully, sort of, fledged member, to go out into Society… he’ll still fuck up, as we do.

rob: everyone fucks up.

matty: but ideally smaller fuck ups, and more capability of dealing with that.

rob: yeah, I think the biggest thing where, and I spoke to the brother-in-law about this, because he’s only a recent father, um, where something that we, sort of, both spoke about is, and I’m sure, actually I’d like to get your feedback on this too. so as, I’d say a parent – but as a dad, which I can relate to, is I’m training both of my kids, or trying to teach both of my kids to be, like, a better person than what I am. like, what, what’s what’s your views on that?

matty: yeah, I guess, um, all you want for your kids, is to do better than what you did, and had, I think that’s fair. my dad’s a funny one cuz he’s a Tradie, he installs duct air conditioning, he’s a sheet metal worker, and for such a long time, his goal was for me to do a better trade than what he did. so he thought I might be an electrician, or probably make more money, but um, so even in that old school mentality, it was still looking for something better, like, made sure I got educated, made sure I stayed in school the whole time, and just had a better life in general, so from my personal experience how I’ve grown up and viewed the world – that seems to be the case, yeah. and it just seems like a realistic goal, right? interestingly enough, Our Generation – we’re both around 30 – we, our generation is going to be the first one that has a lower standard of life than our parents just because of how the economy’s gone, and things that have changed, and that’s, it’s unprecedented, it’s the first time it’s happened in human history, where children are going to be worse off than their parents – obviously exceptions to that – there’s a lot of opportunity out there, but it’s getting hard,

rob: it’s getting very hard but saying that I don’t think like you said there’s opportunity out there you just need to work a fuckload harder for it now though that’s that’s the thing, and even, even if you do work harder, it may not pay off, that’s the realistic things of life, I guess, like those that work the hardest may not get what others get, that’s, it’s part of life.

matty: yeah, how does that feel? like, having these kids growing up, and knowing, like. “shit, they’re going to be doing it kind of tough here”

rob: I mean are they? that’s, that’s where it all comes down to raising them. i wanna raise my too so that, you know, they’re going to be, just like, absolute weapons of people, that despite the tough times and the hard times, that they may come on, like, it it may get better , we don’t know what the future holds, but I want to set them up with every, you know, opportunity and availability to themselves, that they can, you know, Crush whatever it is that they want to do. that’s like I said, that’s the whole goal of being a parent is raise strong kids.

matty: I don’t have the kids, obviously, but I would still have this fear, just – I’m a very realistic person, and if we’re looking at what’s going on at the moment, the average person is struggling

rob: yep

matty: right, so I think we can say, like, “we’re going to make strong kids” but just realistically, like, you’re probably not going to make too many kids that are earning 10 times the salary of a normal person, so things, like, are they going to be able to buy a house in the future, is not like,

rob: I know guys that, like, even like, I was lucky, like, we both bought our houses in the same year so, we’ve done pretty well with obviously what’s happened and all that sort of stuff, but like, I know guys now that are my age that have, you know, got a big fat deposit – they’re struggling to get into the housing market now, let alone like the next generation of kids coming through, so yeah it’s going to be fucking hard but… even just just financially, like everyone’s going to struggle financially at some point in their life, that’s where I think that you can’t just look that far ahead for your kids, and go “oh how are they going to get a house? how are they going to do this” you need to set them up for more in life than, obviously, just being Financial, you can’t just put the expectation of being successful is financially stable. I think there’s more to it than that.

matty: that’s fair – slight diversion on topic – so with Hemi, you’re trying to raise a boy that’s… strong, you want to make him feel capable, but then doing all this stuff with the well-being, there’s a level of compassion and vulnerability – I know you love it – that you have to instill in him

rob: yup

matty: so what’s the balance between saying “look mate, you got to be tough, you got to be strong, there’s power in this, teach them about stoicism, but at the same time it’s okay to talk about your feelings, it’s good to feel them, it’s good to air them out, how do you instill that in a young boy?

rob: well, see, a lot of that happens through sport, I think, and where he is so emotionally in tune with himself, like, he’s an emotional little boy, like, and I’m not going to tell him not to be, but… just say, for example, when he’s on the footy field, if he gets emotional when he gets hurt, I’ve showed him, you know, like, don’t let the other team see that you’re hurt, and… you know he can feel it, of course, you’re going to feel, feel pain, but you know, you don’t want to show your opposition that, you know, you’re hurting and all that sort of stuff, because then you just… it comes back to that whole vulnerability thing – you don’t want them to see that, and then you’re a Target, so…just via the way of sport, he’s learning about, you know, not so much suppressing it.. but… just suppressing it, I guess *laughs*

what an utter fucking dumpster fire. has anyone else watched the abc’s docuseries on kelly lane – her parents taught her emotional suppression through sport too… this requires a whole blog post of it’s own….

matty: so, okay suppressing it on the field but how are you teaching the right Avenues, to be able to air it out?

rob: well that’s that just comes down to, you know, being someone that he thinks he can speak to and whatnot, where like, you know, we can, we’re on the couch and he can go “oh you know this or..”. he, he’s a very I guess, intuitive kid anyway, most kids are. it comes down to, if he asks a question, don’t just like brush it off, like actually look into it, and go, like, “oh I don’t know mate, let’s do some research together, or this or this or ..” it’s yeah it’s just one of those things where, if your kids being intuitive about asking questions, don’t brush it off and not want to deal with it, just say “I don’t know we we’ll figure it out together” but be open to talking with your kids. and if they’re an emotional kid, like, let them let them feel the emotions, you don’t want to create little Hitlers who can’t deal with shit, just want to go gassing people, like…

matty: *laughing with a big smile* little Hitlers, what a, what an analogy. um, how do you balance… being a friend, and being a father?

firstly rob tells on himself here and says “let your kid feel their emotions” … “you don’t want to create little evil humans, who can’t deal with their shit and go around killing people” .. when he doesn’t actually mention ever teaching his son how to “deal with shit” – besides talking about putting him in competitive sports where showing he’s physically or emotionally hurt makes him a target.. and that somehow… emotional suppression, which rob implies he doesn’t do – despite literally admitting to it, would somehow cause someone to be “unable to deal with their shit” and therefore engage in a planned extended genocide orchestrated across multiple countries? or maybe he just means engages in mass murder? either way… we can see how this inappropriate at best.. he’s just used a very real scenario of some person losing their shit and doing something horrific… which happens all the time… to try to back up his method of parenting (no showing emotions when it comes to sports. the way i teach my kids compassion without weakness is boxing. i’ll kick my kids out of the house if they stay longer than i like)
….fyi, over 61 million people died during ww2… over 42 million civilians… the holocaust was the mass murder of jewish people and non-jewish people, including prisoners of war, and people who were taken as slave labor (some were random men who just looked healthy enough, some were men who were trained in trades (like metal work or rail maintenance) that were rounded up from their work sites.).
there were 30,000 slave labor camps, 1000 prisoner of wars camps, 980 concentration camps, 6 internment and killling centres, plus “care” centers, and other incarceration sites…. they used soviet prisoners of war to first test the gas, zyklon b, in the gas chamber in auschwitz… before sending the weak, the old, and the very young to the chambers en masse, stripped of their clothes to save the nazis the trouble of removing them from corpses… why are they making jokes about this?

rob: I’ve never thought about it, you just do it, you, you need to, I don’t know, a lot of people say, like, “you know, you can’t be hard ass” or “you need to be hard ass”, there’s a balance, like, you know, I, every night I tell him “yep love you” before bed, and, you know, give him a hug – not this morning cuz we left at bullshit o’clock, but, you know, like, whenever I’m home and not away for work, like, I will try and give him a hug, or you know, like, say you know proud of you and all this sort of stuff. you got to give him little bits of… I don’t know…. gratification, along the way, but then you also need to critique them, at the same time, and say like “oh hey you could have done this better” or it’s, I don’t know, you just do it, it’s it’s not something I think about, like I said, you know, I just go with the flow.

matty: has he got to any stages where he sort of started testing you and you’ve had to you know somehow say “look mate, my house, you respect me“

rob: every fucking day

matty: *laughs* yeah?

rob: yeah, so I mean, like, he has, like any boy, especially like around that age, I think you, you start to like get little little outbursts, which I can’t remember doing when I was a kid at that age, I can definitely remember doing, you know, you start to have like you know build-ups of all your different shit inside, and you have little outbursts and whatnot, but I don’t remember doing it so young. where, like, you know, I’ve like heard him just storm up the hallway and he’s, like, hit a wall and you’re just like “hey, you’re not going to fix that fucking wall – don’t do it” like, you know, just little stuff like that, where, or I mean, if you did put a hole in a wall, I would then teach him how to fix the hole in the wall, so you know, just it comes back to that whole accountability thing, where you, I don’t know, you just need to be be there for your kids, but then teach them that it’s okay to have little Outburst too. just, if they’re not having their outburst, they’re not knowing how to control it…

dumpster fire on dumpster fire. this is another answer that needs to be expanded on further.. what are these “little outbursts” and “build-ups of different shit inside”… great example of how minimised men’s problem with handling emotions are… instead of helping his son learn to deal with his emotions, he’s saying “you can act like that if you can repair it”…. YIKES. and saying that his son is “intuitive” and that “experiencing outburst will teach him to control it”…..

matty: mmm, I think it’s interesting, um, like, understanding the personality of your kid as well, like, obviously yours, a big age Gap, gender difference, like, very different kids, how is understanding, like, how they act to certain things, and react to things? and maybe the way you need to communicate with them, something that you’ve developed over over time?

rob: still developing it

matty:I mean it’s constantly changing

rob: it’s always changing, because, you know, how you, how you interact with your kid, like, last week, it might be different to this week. depending on how they’re feeling, or what they’re going through with school, or it’s, like, there’s, obviously, always going to be a consistent, sort of, line that you go down, but there’s – so, like, I’d be bullshitting if I was like “oh you know, just, say this week, like, if I’m having a big week, the way that I communicate with the kids may be different” like, no one’s, no one from both sides of the party with communication, is always going to be, like, levelheaded, talking rationally, not overtired, not this, this, this, but, I don’t know, I guess you, you just, need to sort of take a step back before any conversation, and go “okay yep sweet just take five gather my thoughts and get ready for a conversation” that you going to have. I guess it, like, whether it’s good or bad, or anything, just, I think it’s just about being present more than anything, that’s, that’s what kids want.

matty: has there been anything that you’ve had to, you know, you got to introduce them to stuff, whether it be the social media chat, the sex chat, the okay he’s got into this age where it’s time to tell him that Santa doesn’t exist,

rob: no

matty: you haven’t had any of these Santa..

rob: Santa exists, yeah

matty: right, I’m telling him next time

rob: no, don’t do that – um, not really, like, he’s, like, he’s getting to an age now where, like, he’s just, like, literally just started to jump on fortnite, so we let him like jump on fortnite, like, one night out of the week. so he can, you know, be social with all his mates, but he’s, he’s pretty active in all of his other day activities and whatnot, so it’s his little sort of wind down and do that…where hearing some of the chat that he throws can be a little bit toxic so I’ve had to pull him up with a bit of that, like “oh don’t, don’t say that” and he’s like “oh WHYY?” and you have to explain what it means and whatnot, but that’s pretty much it, like, kids, kids are pretty chill for most of the time with conversations that you have to have until… you start having to have those conversations about throwing chat that’s inappropriate online

matty: are you nervous or kind of excited to see him you know get to 12/1314 and have these chats that are like a little bit more…serious

rob: a bit of both, it’s, I know again, it’s, it’s something that I’ll cross the bridge when I get there. it’s – I think kids are kids are exposed to so much more these days with how, how open everything is, and like, you know, you’ve got a thing in palm of your hand that can literally give you any answer to any question that you want.. kids know how to use technology now better than some adults. i think a lot of the questions that you’re going to have to be explaining to kids, I think the parents are going to have to do a lot of research on now too because like there’s some shit that I was only learning about the day when I was speaking to other boys and they’re like “oh, you know, furries” I’m like “what the fuck is a furry?

matty: you should know about furries

rob: should I?

matty: yeah

rob: yeah okay no, I don’t know about furries – but like it’s, it’s all this sort of stuff, like the environment around us, like, the entire world is changing where, I don’t think like a birds in the bees conversation is going to be as simple as having a birds in the bees conversation anymore. there’s so many different things in play now, that I think the parents are going to have to learn about too, as well as trying to figure out how to explain that to your kids in a way that makes sense. I’m not looking forward to it but obviously yeah we cross that bridge when we get to it.

matty: the level of exposure kids have to… all sorts of things, some of them horrendous, like, you know, once you got an internet connection, you can find yourself… deep down rabbit holes seeing stuff that they probably shouldn’t see

rob: I think that’s there’s shit that adults shouldn’t see on the internet though

matty: exactly, I think it’s inevitable that your kids are going to run into to that sort of stuff, and you can’t deal with it every single time, all you can do is, maybe, get ahead of the ball, as quick, as best you can, to teach them, that this stuff kind of does exist or there’s things that they might find or whatever but have a framework where they can come to you and talk about it and feel comfortable about it

rob: well, I think a lot of that, like, you can, you can limit a lot of that with just screen time in general though, for kids, like, you know, I’m lucky, we, my two don’t have too much screen time anyway, like little bea, she might watch, I don’t know Miss moni, or something like that, while she’s getting her hair done, just so she can sit still, but like that that’s essentially it. like, we’re not sitting down in front of a TV for hours on end so we can get other shit done, it’s if we want to keep the kids entertained, we go out and fucking do stuff with them, like that’s, it makes sense to me, doing it that way

matty: it it does at that age but inevitably like Hemi’s going to be going to school with a phone in the in the near future, and that happens, the curtains are open,

rob: I mean you can you can get phones that can you know like lock it all down and all that sort of stuff

matty I dare say kids’s going to be better at technology than you

rob: yeah look he’s probably already better at technology than I am so it’s I guess it’s one of those things that yeah like I said we we cross that bridge when we get to it and it’s something that a lot of parents are probably dealing with now, so you know, if anyone’s listening, and I’m sure there’s going to be reels going up of this sort of stuff, so yeah if anyone’s listening, like drop your parenting advice down below, because, like, there’s no textbook, it’s all about, like, you know, you speak to people that are in the same situation, or in a similar situation, you lean on other parents to get that sort of stuff, and I, I guess, that’s that’s part of it, you just don’t, don’t be ashamed to ask the question if you don’t know what the fuck is going on, just reach out – and it’s no different to what we’ve been pushing with better BLoke project and blokes advice for years now

matty: quick one to finish it on, have you seen um, they’re they’re trying to ban like under 16 year olds using social media in Australia? the government’s suggesting some things and putting pressure on these social networks, to stop kids accessing it

rob: yeah big fan of that big fan

matty: well, it split the crowd right and there’s there’s huge Advocates on both sides for and against ,and a lot of other mental health Charities have come out and said “look we are against this like we understand social media presents a problem but like anything suppression and censorship is probably not the way to deal with it” kids are going to find a way it’s going to push them to, um, go underground they’ll find a way to to talk to each other and do all this stuff, or they’ll find a way to get on the the things, and it’s also putting it in a taboo situation where they’re not supposed to be doing it so they’re not going to tell people what they’ll found or what they’ve experienced on the flip side it’s the argument that it’s giving the parents a better framework cuz then it’s not the parents saying you can’t have Facebook, you can’t have Instagram, it’s illegal you can have a when you’re 16

rob: that’s but that again comes back to that whole like pandering down to not having the conversations you don’t want to have, like, if you’re a parent, and you don’t want your kid on social media, don’t let your kid on fucking social media. simple “oh but I don’t want to upset them I don’t want to hurt their feelings” fuck that! you’re the parent, put your foot down, like, that’s what it comes down to, that’s it’s, as simple as that, yeah.

matty: *dramatic tone* staunch! I’m so keen to see hemi test the shit out of you when he gets to 14.

rob: he is going to test the fuck out, actually, I don’t think He’s going to be the one to test me

matty: oh bea’s going to break you

rob: oh yeah bea will 100% break me, she’s, she’s the one, um. one thing that I sort of want to talk about, and we, this is something that we’ve had over the last couple of years, obviously, you know, BLokes advice is , has got a pretty big presence on social media and whatnot, um whenever we talk about, you know, like, raising boys, or you know, just Boys in general, like kids, um, we get a lot of women that comment on it that, you know, they might be single mothers, for some reason or, and they don’t actually know, I guess, too many questions about, you know, the importance of – I guess, male role models, and you know, strong male figures in their, in their lives and whatnot. they may not have that, um. what’s, what’s your views on that? like, do you reckon boys need strong male figures in their lives?

matty: like I said earlier, I’m a very realist kind of person, all the evidence suggests that having a dual parent household does make a better environment for raising kids, obviously it doesn’t mean your kids going to be broken, –

rob: yep

matty: – like, you grew up with a single mother –

rob: yep

matty: – family, you know, divorce happens, and bad things happen, so there is situations where it’s not going to be the case, but I think it would be important to fulfill that role, whether it’s, a, you know, getting him into a gym where there’s a boxing coach that takes some own, ownership, or there’s uncles, or brothers around. mothers are hugely important, you know, they’re nurturing, they have so much natural ability to parent, but they they just cannot be a strong male role model

rob: careful there, careful, what you’re saying, you’re going to upset a lot of people saying that mothers can’t be strong male role models

matty: they can’t be a strong male role model, they can be a fantastic role model, but there’s certain things that boys need to learn to become men

rob: I completely agree with you,

matty: and if they don’t have that, they’re going to stay boys, until they’re forced into a situation that confronts them, and they have to learn some hard lessons, so I think if you are a single mother, get some men around that, that young boy.

rob: yeah whether that be, like you said, you know, getting them into Sport, and, look, from my experience of having kids in sport it’s super fucking important anyway, just to get them in a team environment, but also… a lot of the parents, whether they’re men or women and all that sort of stuff, that are in those sporting environments, they want the best for their kids too, so you, you’re in, you’re in an environment where there’s going to be some male role models that you’re going to be able to take some positivity from, so yeah, I completely agree with you on every aspect there.

i’m sure a lot of you will also have a huge alarm bell going off in your head right now… this dangerous indifference these men cling to truly puts children in harms way.

matty: so, sorry if we pissed anyone off there.

rob: *staring down the camera* I’m not, fuck you, that’s what i stand by

matty: we’ll sign this one out, this has been all things parenting for your young fellas, so *looks at rob* thanks for sharing your advice and *looks at the camera* my unsolicited advice.

yeah… so they apologise for saying women can’t be male role models… and just.. didn’t mention anything about the inappropriate jokes… i wanted to do a running commentary with the transcript but…this needs to be further reviewed in dept after my brain has recovered from watching the episode 3 times to get the punctuation in the right places and maintain the vibe. i kept in a lot of the boys stutters and repeated words to keep it authentic as possible. my brain is now goo. stay tuned for more. xox eve